1. Development in Developmental Education
Roadblocks to Faculty
Development in Developmental Education

2. Robert Miller Associate Professor of English Community College of Baltimore County
Innovations

3. Though that’s changing…
Educational development is a unique professional field in that it is not defined by content taught in a single degree that qualifies individuals to be in it (DiPietro 2014).
Though that’s changing…

4. K-12, while behind in many areas, focuses strongly on professional development.

5. Why is it difficult?
“…long-held professional norms, such as faculty autonomy, coupled with increased reliance on adjuncts, and weak instructional leadership, serve as barriers to meaningful or sustained professional development on teaching.
Moreover, faculty have an array of responsibilities that extend beyond classroom teaching” (Bickerstaff and Cormier).

6. English ALP CRT ACLT ABC DEF GHI
Many colleges have a hodgepodge – each discipline has its own. And even within a discipline there are sometimes quite a few.
English ALP CRT ACLT ABC DEF GHI

7. And this doesn’t seem to matter if it’s top down or bottom up.
Add to this the difficulty of new programs that not all faculty understand or even accept. Ask some of the early faculty of ALP and CAP to verify if this is true.
And this doesn’t seem to matter if it’s top down or bottom up.

8. We focus so much on how to develop the instructional programs, but “we know little about faculty members’ questions, concerns, and needs” (Bickerstaff and Cornier).

9. Incentive How do we get folks to buy in?

10. The 3 major components
Incentive
Structure
Assessment

11. For example, adjuncts: …campus to campus to campus to…

12. We can’t afford to pay them (can we)?

13. There are schools that pay - but how much?

14. Wow $50!!!

15. How can we “incentivize”?
Aduncts often report that there is importance to feeling a closer connection to the school (just like our caring about students).
Being paid for training
Being recognized for training
- transcript/diploma that MEANS something
Other methods of payment. For example, tiers
Being given preference for scheduling. (Dailey-Herbert)

16. Full time Discover and acknowledge their needs
More collegial interaction
Promote opportunities to give back
(Strange and Merdinger)

17. Structure

18. Research has shown that extending over a period of time is most important.
Making sure there is time for reflection that ties to the classroom practice.

19. Much of professional development, at least in the beginning, is concerned with explaining and selling “innovation” and less on authentic classroom work.

20. Often too many ideas are given.

21. Or ideas that run counter to faculty beliefs or concerns 

22. “in a meeting of faculty teaching the co-requisite model an agenda item was strategies for teaching grammar. These conversations tended to be unstructured with many ideas discussed simultaneously. In the conversation about grammar, participants toggled between sharing specific techniques (e.g., showing students sample incorrect sentences), describing obstacles to teaching the topic (e.g., students make the same mistakes, even with repeated instruction), and discussing their instructional goals (e.g., “I don’t want them to be able to recite the rules, but I want them to be able to edit their work”). If participants gleaned new strategies from conversations like this, they did not receive guidance on how these strategies might be employed within a purposeful instructional design” (Bickerstaff and Marnier).

23. Building Leaders Teaching faculty how to: Lead mentor
Understand faculty development

24. Train the trainers

25. Some key concepts Faculty inquiry groups Coaching (Knight)
Teaching squares (Roemer) Forum Theater(Takayama) Community of Practice (Wenger) Faculty learning communities
Peer Review: “As one faculty member put it: “When someone criticizes my scholarship, they are criticizing my ideas; when they criticize my teaching, they're criticizing me!” (Smith).
Conferences

26. Figs Teaching Squares Institutes
Problems
Figs
Teaching Squares
Institutes

27. CAP
CCBC – ALP
CUNY Start
Patrick Henry Cooperative Learning

28. Time for Reflection
One problem with many is there is not enough time to critically reflect.
And what exactly is “critical reflection”?

29. Give them what they can use!
Share assignments Share curriculum Share prompts
Share Share Share Share Share
Video

30. Assessment

31. It seems like it should be easy.
After all, are more students passing? But perhaps the first folks are more energized or have a greater buy in. (ALP)
Quantitative

32. More rigorous: randomly select and compare sections, but the numbers will be very small.

33. Qualitative Talk to students
Talk to faculty (are they actually buying in)
Normative Assessment

34. Problem Difficult to focus leading to results you want

35. How do we solve ALL the problems?

36. Most powerful is when facultyUS
Most powerful is when faculty
become….

37. Collaborators
Don’t count on others just to give them
new skills.
And most powerful: researchers (of their
own problems)